


The Boy From Gaza

by grizzly_bear_bane



Category: Original Work
Genre: Depression, Father-Son Relationship, First Time, Flashbacks, Gaza, M/M, Original Fiction, Prostitution, References to Suicide, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, The Middle East circa the 90s, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-27 23:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/667722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grizzly_bear_bane/pseuds/grizzly_bear_bane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ahden falls in love with a Palestinian boy while he and his father visit his uncle in Gaza.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy From Gaza

**Author's Note:**

> Another character study and practice in short story writing.

At fourteen years old and living in Cairo, there were plenty of reasons why I needed my older brother, Nassir, to not go away to Germany; the first being that he was a my best friend, the second, he was my bodyguard, and the third, my buffer between our father and I.  At the time, he had been at university in Germany for six months, had not written to me in five, and had not even called mama or baba at all.  I was alone, abandoned.  I wanted to hate him for it, but I had another reason to loathe his going away now: Having to go with baba into the Gaza Strip. 

It was the one thing I truly hated in this world.  Why did baba’s brother have to live _there_ , in the middle of a Palestinian-Jewish, never-ending warzone?  (It was 1993, yet people were still fighting over land claims made in 1949!)  My father would visit him only four times out of the year, and now, without his beloved eldest son to travel with him, he took _me_ , his tiny, spare child with the cracking voice and too long hair; the child that made him uncomfortable.  It had been almost two years since my brother had outed me to our parents and since then, baba and I could not for our souls salvage any kind of relationship, and yes; it was from a huge lack of trying on his part.

But it was not as if I had ever wanted to go with them into Gaza; I was not envious of Nassir.  Absolutely not.  It was always too hot there, and always too dry, and the people would stare at you as if at any moment you were going to reveal yourself as being an Israeli spy, or something.  The last time baba and Nassir had gone there, they were holed up in Uncle Husani’s house for a month while Israeli missiles fell from the sky in all directions, Nassir had told me so.  The day they came back, I vowed to myself that I would never, ever go there.

And so I found myself, the day before baba was to go back into Gaza, faking every illness I could muster, but to no avail.  I had no idea why he needed someone, let alone me, to go with him.  It was not like he needed someone to talk to on the trip; _anyone_ would do a better job at that than I.

Our neighbor, whom did not like me at all, offered to drive us in his old, dusty car.  So, with a set frown on baba’s face, and me sitting quietly in the backseat, with a silent plea in my eyes at mama standing in the driveway, we started the long, long drive to the train station.

I did not know what was worse; having to hear our neighbor, the holiest of holy Said Gamal, go on and on about “making love” to his wife, and having nothing but the boring landscape or the worn knees of my jeans to look at – as every time I would glance up, baba would be eyeing me funny in one of the mirrors – or having to sit between baba and “holy-disciple-of-Mohammed” Gamal the entire train ride from Cairo to Gaza, as Gamal had taken the liberty of traveling the rest of the way with us to see a man about alcohol, or something else illegal – the _hypocrite_.  I could have sworn I was going to die and evaporate on the spot when Gamal happened to point out a man to baba from across the train station earlier that day, who had been wearing tight pants and a bright colored sweater and sitting with another man dressed in similar clothing.  Baba made Gamal stop talking about them as he did not want to hear it, but it was in the way he said it that made me uneasy.  He was not secretly defending me, he simply did not want to hear or see or think about people like those men and what they were.  My hands shook so I had to put them under my legs so no one would notice.

We stopped near the border and switched to an old bus that would take us to the Rafah crossing point.  Then, onto another large bus, we squeezed into the middle seats and watched as those who could not fit were left behind to catch the next one. Soon, we crossed the border out of Egypt. 

It was instant; the moment we crossed over, you knew it.  The bus would slow down, the people would grow less talkative, more alert, as it made is way across the battle-marked path.  It stopped several times to let people off and on, but never stayed in one place for more than a few agonizing minutes.  We Egyptians – with the exception of my father – were all wary of staying in Palestine for too long; ours was a stable country, this province, controlled by the Israelis, fought over by everyone, was not stable, was not safe for the people who lived here, nor for its passersby.  And yet those Palestinians who boarded the bus moved at a different, slow pace than the Egyptians who left.  They were used to living on the edge, I supposed, used to panic; nothing seemed to bother them so much after all they had been through. 

It made me dread the long journey all the way up the Strip into the city, made this place seem that much more frightening to me.  I was more than a bit surprised when I caught baba’s glance; I could not shield my wide-eyed look of panic from him. My silent plea to be free of this was plain on my face; I was not ashamed by it for once.

He looked over at Gamal. The filthy man had fallen asleep and started drooling over his collar. To my utter surprise, baba quietly wrapped an arm around me and told me to sleep.  I remember my eyes growing wider, unable to read baba in that moment, and thinking any second I was going to wake up and he wouldn’t be holding me anymore, only scowling.  Needless to say, I did not close my eyes to sleep, but to rest my head on his unfamiliar chest and breath in the sent of cologne that mama had given him the month Nassir left.  His strong arm squeezed my skinny shoulders and I relaxed a tiny bit, distracted from the battered scenery outside, my eyes closed, thinking of the times when baba, Nassir, and I would do nice things together, when baba still liked me.  I supposed, that with Nassir having abandoned us both in those months, baba needed my company as much as I needed Nassir’s.  Maybe things would change now, I thought, between baba and I, and maybe we could be friends again after all. 

* * * 

Uncle Husani was waiting for us when we arrived in Gaza City.  I don’t remember ever meeting him before this trip, as I was an infant the last time he offered to visit my father in Egypt.  It was funny to me that he looked almost exactly like baba, just as Nassir and I looked alike, but their temperaments, however, were quite different.  Ammu was very loud and quite animate, whereas baba, although happy to see his brother, was a bit withdrawn, and only wanted to be in a private place where he could sleep off the day’s long travel.  My hopes at this being a good trip rose to new highs when ammu smiled at me, yet sank beneath the ground, after he gave me a great hug then eyed my father funny when he thought I was not looking.  Was it so easy for _everyone_ to see through me, I thought in dismay as I followed both men out into the street where ammu’s truck was waiting to take us to his house – I did not see Gamal for the rest of the trip, which was wonderful, to say the very least. 

Gaza City was in much better shape than the other places we had passed.  Ammu’s house was nothing like I had expected, especially after listening to Nassir’s always-exaggerated stories of crumbling buildings and mad Israeli gunmen roaming the streets.  It was a cozy-looking house separate from the others close by.  It looked inviting and welcoming to everyone who wished to visit, with its red brick steps and walls overtaken with pretty green vines.  Unfortunately, it only had one bedroom, as ammu strangely lived alone; he offered to sleep on his living room couch and gave baba and I his bedroom, which meant having to share a room – a _bed_ – with baba, that my stranger-uncle had been sleeping in and had not changed the sheets at all for us. 

Baba was quiet to me when we got ready for bed that night, just stayed on the other side of the room as we changed into our nightshirts, as I braided my hair and put away our clothes from the long day.  Maybe he was just tired, I thought. After all, we had had a nice day traveling together, so it must have been from tiredness; he had no reason to be upset about anything.

I barely slept that night, suffocating in the smell of musk and bad cologne that stained the pillows and bed covers, unable to think with baba’s loud snoring.  When I got up for a glass of milk from the refrigerator in the small kitchen, baba had taken all the covers, which were rolled around him like a large baby in swaddling clothes.  I took the small, spare blanket ammu had set on the bedside table and wrapped it around me, as I sat in the chair in the corner, trying not to think of Nassir.

I woke up the next morning from a strange dream, another bad omen for Nassir… or myself; I could never tell which when I was awake, and found myself back in the bed and baba now sitting in the chair, putting on his nice, polished black shoes.  It was late in the day; why hadn’t he woken me up for the morning call to prayer? “Are you okay, baba,” I finally asked, in a sleepy voice that made the corner of baba’s mouth go up in a small smile.

“I’m well, son, go back to sleep.  Husani and I are going out into the nearby clinic to check up on a few of his patients.  You should stay in the house today, perhaps clean up the place a bit for your uncle, okay,” was all he said before leaving the house with Uncle Husani. 

I contemplated going back to sleep and simply ignoring baba’s “suggestion” to clean ammu’s house, but then my promise to Nassir to be good for baba came to my mind.  Maybe if I did a good job, he and Uncle Husani would like me better?  I wasn’t so sure; cleaning a house was mostly women’s work, and that didn’t seem to be the sort of thing to make me seem less… well, _girly_ , to them.  But there was no use doing otherwise; I wasn’t any good at doing boy things, other than soccer, since baba had handed me over to mama to look after.  I shrugged it off and got out of bed quickly and went to work.  The first thing I did was change those bed sheets, then to wash their dirty breakfast dishes, ignoring the offended twitch in my lip that they had not even saved anything for me to eat.  I swept, dusted, and even tended to the lovely garden in the courtyard behind the house, where after finding a decent sized tub managed to wash the sheets and clothes as well, ignoring the annoying questions in my mind as to when the last time had been since he’d thought to take care of any of these things.  If I was to be certain of anything in those days, it was that Uncle Husani desperately needed a wife to take care of him.  The garden seemed to be the one thing that needed only minimal care.

When I was done with the chores, I bathed and finally succumbed to my desire to write Nassir yet another letter on the papyrus stationeries he had bought for me.  I quickly sealed it and put it in my small bag so I could mail it to him as soon as I went back home.

* * *

Uncle Husani was not impressed by my cleaning at all when he and baba returned.  He complained that he could no longer find his things – mostly junk, like dated, opened envelopes that had nothing in them but return addresses, or “special list,” and stacks of papers.  Even after telling him that I had documented his papers and put them in a handy pile in his office, had recorded the addresses off of the envelops into his address book, and put the lists in his “to do” self, also in his office, he complained about me forgetting to take the clothes and sheets off the clothes line outside, after they were only partly dry, so that they would not be wrinkled. 

I decided in that moment that I did not like Uncle Husani.  Baba simply patted my back a few times before making me set the table for dinner.  I also decided then that my hopes from the train ride had been useless, as baba apparently had not changed in my favor at all and now had yet another person in his life to put before me.  Why was I so hurt or surprised, I asked myself.  Baba had mama, his firstborn, and his own brother; what reason did he ever have to care about me?

As soon as they left for the clinic again the next day, I ventured out into the city.  I used what little money I had saved up for a trip – _any_ trip – and bought a new scarf, a beautiful nightshirt that was slightly embroidered around the collar, and a painted box for storing all my sketches and small paintings, secret poems, and all my pens and brushes.  I went back to the house soon after to put away those things, just in case I was not allowed to go out again today.  I hid the scarf and shirt inside the small box, and went back out into the city. 

Soon after beginning my second trip outside, however, I got lost in the maze of houses and buildings, and did not return home until late that night to a furious baba and uncle.  I had been at the center of baba’s wrath before plenty of times, but little did I know that this time, all while I had been trying to find my way back, Uncle Husani had taken the liberty of putting bad things into baba’s head about me; that I had probably been out drinking, or stealing like all the other boys who come here from out of town, or, he even dared to say, I might have been out with a man.  I honestly thought the man to be out of his wits, insane, to say such things so suddenly and without any provocation from me.  I don’t know why baba believed him; I had never met the man before yesterday evening, and had done nothing in my life to make the things he said even seem possible.  But then, I thought, he is baba’s brother and I was just… me.

I slept on the floor that night, unable to care for blankets or comfort, not with my betraying father sleeping in that bed, snoring peacefully, while I ached and hurt from his brother’s words still hours later.  I no longer wished to be optimistic, no longer had the strength to lie to myself any longer; baba hated me, and seeing me be hurt by a man close to but not my father must have made him very happy.  All the hate he must have been building towards me for the past two years, all the weight that it carried, had been shifted to his brother’s shoulders, he did not need to feel responsible for it.  I remember wanting to take back everything Nassir had said to him about me, I wanted to kill Gamal, and Uncle Husani, for being who they were, for having favor with _my_ father when I did not. 

Unable to stay calm in the room, I snuck into the bathroom and sat on the floor, teeth clenching my towel so that no one could hear my sobs, as they washed over me like a flood all night and into the morning.

I thought about running away, the next day after we returned from the local mosque, which Uncle Husani insisted to baba that I must go to in order for Allah to cure me of whatever was wrong with me.  I thought about running away back to Cairo, so I could say goodbye to mama, before leaving for Berlin to find Nassir.  I did not wait for baba and ammu to leave that day; instead, I simply grabbed my coat and new scarf and walked out, not caring to take anything else with me.  Baba will be sorry, I thought, for allowing anyone to treat me so unfairly.  Just watch, as I do everything that was accused of me, and then tarnish his good name for all eternity.

I was contemplating which thing to do first, eyes locked on my shoes, caught up in my thoughts, when a tall boy ran into me and almost knocked us both over.  He was dirty, and got a smudge of something on my white shirt.  I was boiling with anger as I righted myself, ignoring his apologizes.

That is, until I looked up finally and saw his face.

I think I stopped breathing for a moment; he was the most handsome boy I had ever seen.  I always believed that I would never see a more handsome face than that of an Egyptian boy, but this boy proved me wrong, terribly wrong.  He stopped apologizing and smiled, and I think I may have blacked out for a second.

“Are you okay,” he asked, tilting his head to the side a little.  His voice was mature and steady, unlike mine, and flavored with the dialect of Palestinians here.

I had to think before answering, “Em…” only to go off into my own nervous apologies.  “Forgive me, I wasn’t paying attention, I hope you’re not hurt, I really didn’t mean to be walking so fast,” and on and on until I could no longer squeeze any air out of my lungs.  I remember the sun was so bright that day; I blushed, knowing I had to look funny squinting my huge eyes up at him. 

He laughed a little and said I was cute! He then asked if he could join me wherever I was going.  I nearly fainted again at his boldness, as we were still standing in the middle of the crowded street; unashamed he took my hand and started to walk in the direction I had been heading towards.  His name was Rami, he was fourteen-and-a-half years old, and had lived in Gaza all his life. 

He took me through the backstreets, and to the best markets, chatting about this place, or that person, as if we had been friends forever, and bought us both food to take back to his house.  I was more than a little hesitant at that, not wanting to get in trouble again with baba or have ammu accuse me of anything, but when I looked at Rami, I knew I would follow him anywhere, especially since good behavior constituted as nothing to my father, and had I not gone out today with every intention of never going back to Uncle Husani’s house again?  Rami understood me, like Nassir, and wanted me to smile, not cry, and that was more than enough for me.

 

His “house” was situated between an apartment complex on its right and a store on its left that had a huge crater in it where the window should have been.  “From the fighting,” he told me, “I did not live here when this place was bombed, but it is a decent enough place now, I suppose.”

Rami had no family, and lived with a much older man whom he was not related to.  I never saw the man all while I was there, as he was out doing business elsewhere, Rami had told me.  That, he explained, was why I was allowed to go to his house that day.  The man would have been angry with Rami, and would have done bad things to me if he were there.  He showed me bruises on his arms and shoulders as proof. The look on his face had been serious, grave enough for me to not question him further on that matter.

We spent the whole day in that small, empty room, in the center of its cracked cement floor, watching the sunset outside the glassless window, until he hung a piece of cloth over it to help keep out the night’s drafty air.  He would listen to me talk and talk about Cairo, about my family, about my brother, with little or nothing to say back to me, only to comment or ask a question here and here, “How old is your mother,” or “When will your brother be back.”  There was something very different about talking to him than with my brother.  There was a warm look in his eyes that invited me in, unlike Nassir’s always teasing eyes that ever searched for something to make fun of me with or get me into trouble. 

Rami never made fun of me, never tried to make any serious thing I said seem less so; he held me when I told him about my brother’s strange behavior and his disappearances, how he would not talk to me anymore, about my father and Uncle Husani not treating me well.  I felt almost completely detached from Nassir in this room with Rami, like I had my own life here, with my own experiences and my own beliefs, and an identity that was all mine, all thanks to Rami.  When he said I was pretty, when he took the tie out of my hair to let it fall loose and play with it, I felt appreciated, honored at last.  Here, it was just Rami and I; no brothers, no people to hurt us, only smiles and love to share solely with the other, at least for this night.

We bundled up under heavy blankets on the floor in the corner of his tiny room, away from the drafty window that night.  We were wrapped up like mummies, he said, and then kissed me once, and then again, then never stopped.  My lips melted into his and something akin to electricity ran through my body.  I let him touch me then, do whatever he wanted with me.  In a single day, he had made me truly believe that I was special to him; he had become the storehouse for my soul, my love. 

Rami was my first, of course.  I remember my fear, my nervousness rising in an instant, then when those things were pushed away like all my clothes, I remember only my wanting, my happiness.  I don’t remember Rami ever being nervous, just quiet and gentle with his touches, bold in his movements, yet hypnotically graceful.  While his emotional love was soothing and easy, his physical love hurt like nothing I had ever felt before, but I trusted him, and he was patient and helped me to unearth my pleasure hidden under the pain and my self-conscious inexperience and the unfamiliarity of my body. 

I was still breathless when he rolled onto his back, and let me do to him the same.  It felt completely new and different, like delicate sparks rather than electric shocks were coursing through my body and into his, but it still so wonderfully connected me with him. 

He had told me afterwards that with time and practice, “being the woman,” as he put it, would hurt less and less.  I remember my shock at hearing Rami say that, amazed that he would know such things. He was only my age.  How many others had he been with?  I asked him that.  He told me, neither boastfully nor proudly, that he could not remember as he had stopped counting a year ago.  It never occurred to me back then that Rami could have been a prostitute; I never thought it possible for boys to do that sort of thing, but I had held my tongue and let him continue to pet my hair until I fell asleep in the warmth trapped within the blankets that we had passionately made. 

The next day, he kicked me out just after sunrise, saying that we had slept too long and that the man would be back soon.  I begged Rami to come with me, to run away too, but he tearfully refused.  He didn’t seem like the type of boy to cry, he seemed so much stronger than me, but he assured me that there was nothing wrong with crying; especially if you cry for someone you loved.  He gave me his hemp bracelet with the blue and green beads woven into the rope, and I gave him my scarf.   He told me to go back to my uncle’s house, to forget all my hurt and loneliness.  I clung to him for as long as he would let me, then promised to be back the very next day. 

I began to walk away but paused soon after.  Fueled by an intense hatred of the man who lived with Rami, and a sudden attack of withdrawal. I hid behind the neighboring store with the blasted front to see what the man might look like, to see if I had a chance of taking him down and rescuing Rami. However, several men showed up at once and went into the small house. 

I was contemplating going up to the cloth-covered window to see Rami again, when I heard the screaming cry of a boy in pain ring out from behind the makeshift curtain. It was muffled as soon as it began, but it was enough to make my blood turn cold and my heart stop beating.  Rami was being hurt, my thoughts shouted, I had to save him.  But fear would not let me move forward, as his warnings came back with full force of what would happen to me, if the man – or men – saw me.  With tears scalding my face in the chilly winds I ran as fast as I could until the house was no longer in sight.

I ran straight to my uncle’s house, to beg them to help me save my beautiful Rami, but the house was empty; they could have been anywhere in the city, I didn’t know where to look for them.  I was helpless.  A great, painful noise escaped my lungs like a wounded beast and I collapsed there on the living room floor.  I had never felt like such a failure, a betraying coward in all my life for not helping my Rami when he needed me.

The next day I went back to see Rami and demand he go with me and stop getting hurt, only to find the house empty, the door left ajar.  The first thing to catch my eye was my scarf, torn into little shreds on the floor.  The man must have seen it and got angry at Rami; I felt so stupid for giving him that scarf now.  It was obvious that I had caused him so much pain, and now they were gone; I pushed back tears knowing that I might not ever see my Rami again.   

But then I saw the blanket we had shared lying on the floor and ran over to pick it up, hoping Rami may have left a note or something for me in it.  I screamed as the sunlight from outside revealed the large slash marks and the horrible dark stains of blood marring the blanket, staining the cement floor underneath.  It was then that I saw the blood staining the walls as well, in lines the size of fingertips and the handprints of a teenage boy.  There were bloody scratch marks all over the floor; Rami had tried to fight them back and lost.  I ran back to the spot where I had hidden the day before and my stomach emptied violently and I collapsed again.  

* * * 

The sun was still bright as ever in the sky, yet each day passed for me shadowed in a thick black fog of my own creation.  I cried for days, locked in my little corner of the room baba and I shared, buried under all of ammu’s blankets.  I didn’t speak, I didn’t write Nassir a single letter.  I was angry.  So angry.  And so dead inside. I took a knife to my throat twice in desperation, but they were all dull from misuse and ill care like everything else here, unable to even cut thin foods; there was not a razor to be found in the house. 

I remained silent and detached from baba and ammu until they would go out and leave me alone, and I would fall into delirium again.  I made up scenarios in my head as to how my Rami had been killed, while I had been running away.  How could he have ended up in the terrible life he had?  Perhaps, his parents had suspected him to be like me, and had grown angry and cast him out where he would have been picked up by… Or maybe he had been kidnapped, as seemed to be common here but only among certain girls… Perhaps Rami had run away, because he did not have a brother like I did to stand up for him against…

Baba opened the door to the room.  I threw off the blankets and hurried past him outside, unable to look at his face and have him see my angry, crazed eyes.  He called after me, but I didn’t stop until I stumbled into the garden out back.  I thought of drowning myself in the pretty pool amongst such pretty flowers.  I would be a pretty corpse for Rami enclosed by this small flowery garden; he would like that, to have me meet him in death with flower petals in my hair and clothes. 

I knelt down, and went to put my head under the water, but a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me back inside the house.  I screamed, until baba hit me twice and restrained me on the couch.  The house was quiet but from my manic struggle; ammu did not come home with baba that night.  He shook me and yelled, but I heard and felt none of it; my Rami was dead, I had sealed his fate with that cursed scarf, I had heard him be tortured, I had seen and felt his blood on our blanket and I ran away from it all.  A vision appeared in my mind of Rami’s bloody body floating in that shallow pool outside; the image shifted quickly to that of Nassir’s body and I blacked out.

Suddenly the madness stopped and baba and I simply stilled on the old couch in the living room.  I remembered Rami saying that it was okay to cry so I did and found I couldn’t stop, even after baba released me.  He left me in the room alone only long enough to fetch a blanket to wrap over my shivering body.  “Go away,” I told him, but he didn’t budge.  I shook off his hands and tried to run away again, but he held me.  I hated him so much, hated that he had no idea why I was hurting, when he should have.

“Leave me alone.”

“No.  Now tell me what’s the matter with you boy,” he ordered. All it did was make me more upset.

“You don’t care, nobody cares!  You don’t even like me anymore, so let me go.”

His great brow furrowed; he turned me to face him more, asking, “Is that what all this about?  By Allah, you get hysterical just like your mother, Ahden.  Of course I like you; you are my son, okay?  Snap out of it,” he smiled, confused. 

I remember everything changed then; I no longer cared myself about anything.  I had crossed boundaries that should never be crossed by a child, but I did not care.  I felt myself change in that moment, as if I had transcended my childhood and was now a man.  A man trapped and control by my secret lover’s death.

My heartbeat slowed, my breath calmed, and I looked him right in the eye and said tiredly, “Baba, you know nothing about me.  And I would be honored to be compared with mama over you any day, except what you believe to be possessing me is not hysterics.  I am angry, I am hurt, and it no longer has anything to do with you.  I ran away from here four days ago, to escape you and that man I cannot call my uncle, because I don’t know him.  I ran away and you didn’t even notice me leave, and I met a boy, named Rami, and he was beautiful.”  I paused at baba’s uncomfortable face and it made me happy. “He loved me.  He loved me so much; more than Nassir, more than mama, more than you ever could, and I loved him back—”

“No more, Ahden, I won’t hear this,” he shook his head, interrupting me, but I didn’t stop.

“He was murdered, baba, by men who would have hurt me too if not for Rami making me leave.  I heard him die; I saw his blood!  With him, I didn’t need your love, or your acceptance, or anyone else’s, but he’s dead now, and I’m left here with you, and you hate me!”

My eyes bore into him, waiting for his response, unaffected by his pained expression. 

“Ahden, you…” he tried again, “You are my son. I thought that giving you space was what was best for you, to spend time with your mother, because I thought that was what you wanted.”

“You don’t know what I want and you are my father.  Yet I am your son and know well what you want, father,” I stated solemnly.

“Which is?”

“Nassir.”  The tears tried their best to show themselves but I kept them down; now was not the time for such things. Only Rami was worth my tears, no one else.

Baba let a great sigh out from his lungs as he sat back, sober and astounded.  I was as good at reading people as my brother.  And now the truth was out and baba was left vulnerable and yet expected to making the next move.

His own tears slipped out.  He shook his head slowly and lowered, but he reclaimed composure quickly.  The eyes that now looked back at me were sad and tired. He breathed deeply again.  “Ahden, I need you to be my son again.  Nassir has left, he has made his life elsewhere.  You must be my son.”

I wanted to ask him just when had I not been his son, then remembered Nassir once calling me baba’s daughter; it was odd then, but offended me now.  “No. I _am_ your son, baba,” I told him, “It is _you_ who must be my father again.”

 

Baba never made me go with him to Gaza ever again, and I was grateful for that.  I visited the place where Rami had lived only once more before the trip back home.  It had been early morning and the air was crisp with the rising sun.  Someone else had moved in, another band of the homeless seeking whatever shelter they could.  The bloody blanket and pieces of scarf were thrown out on the curb.  I took the blanket and washed it in ammu’s garden, and hid it along with the scarf fragments and the memory of Rami in the painted box.

 

The End.


End file.
